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Forum to feature three leading Democratic candidates for U.S. Senate

March 30, 2016

Forum to feature three leading Democratic candidates for U.S. Senate

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — A forum featuring the three leading candidates seeking the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania’s upcoming primary will take place at 8 p.m. on Saturday, April 9, at Penn State.

The 60-minute event will be broadcast live from the WPSU studios located in Innovation Park. The forum audience is by invitation only; however, the event will be streamed live at wpsu.org/live. The forum also will be broadcast live on WPSU-TV, as well as WVIA-TV (Scranton), WITF-TV (Harrisburg), WQED-TV (Pittsburgh), WQLN-TV (Erie) and WLVT-TV (Bethlehem). WHYY-TV (Philadelphia) will also broadcast the event at a later date.

All Democratic candidates polling above 5 percent in the March 24 Franklin and Marshall poll have been invited and agreed to participate. They include (in alphabetical order):

John Fetterman, mayor of Braddock, Pennsylvania;

Kathleen McGinty, former chief of staff to Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, former secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, and a 2014 gubernatorial candidate; and

Joe Sestak, former U.S. Representative and Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in 2010.

WPSU and the McCourtney Institute for Democracy at Penn State are co-sponsoring the forum. Senior scholars in the McCourtney Institute, the production team at WPSU, and Penn State students also developed the format for the forum. Veteran WPSU Penn State host Patty Satalia will moderate the discussion, which will focus on the concerns of college students and other young Pennsylvanians. Students will be invited to submit and ask questions of the candidates.

The McCourtney Institute for Democracy is an interdisciplinary center dedicated to understanding and improving democracy through research, teaching and outreach. For more information, visit http://democracyinstitute.la.psu.edu/.

WPSU Penn State is a PBS/NPR member station serving central Pennsylvania. For more information, visit http://wpsu.org/.